Unconscious
(or conscious?) hypocrisyWestern
Dissidents on the Reactions to the tragedy at the World Trade CenterBy Brent
Herbert 14 September 2001, from 'A
Witness to Yahweh'

While
there is no denying the grief of those who lost family or friends in New
York, looking at the disaster from a non-western perspective one can only
wonder if the world sees hypocrisy in the outpourings of grief.

For example
in the world's poorest nations, tens of thousands of children and infants
die everyday of hunger and hunger related issues. This takes place in a
world of plenty, although most people are led to believe that there is
a 'global world wide food shortage', a callous propaganda argument often
used to justify the development of 'biogenetically engineered food' to
'solve the crisis'. There is no daily outpourings of mourning and grief
for the thousands who perish daily, nor are they even seen or heard from
in our culture. Anything that might have helped to give some perspective
to the anger expressed in the suicide attacks in New York and Washington
are invisible. Looking at it from the perspective of the world's poorest
people then, it is more understandable that poor Palestinian children,
74% of whom qualify for U.N. Food relief, would be dancing in the streets,
in particular given the symbolism of the attack on the symbols of American
wealth and power embedded in the disaster. While such images are being
replayed over and over again (see the conservative Christian broadcasting
system) and might seem shocking to Western viewers, those who are watching
us from the poorest parts of the world see a different world than we do...

I have been
surfing the Zmag site and reading the reactions of prominent dissidents
to the American disaster. In a piece entitled BlowBack,
Jeff Sommers writes,

"In
CIA parlance missions that are “successful” create backlashes. The CIA
aptly calls this “Blowback.” ... The US maintained order during its tenure
of hegemony through use of both covert and overt operations that helped
signal the very blowback we witnessed on the 11th. In 1953 Allen Dulles,
brother of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, thought it clever to
maintain order in Iran by overthrowing its democratically elected leader,
Mohammed Mossadegh ... trained the Shah of Iran’s secret police in all
sorts and manners of techniques that brutal dictatorships employ against
their citizens. This bought “stability” ... in overthrowing Mossadegh a
25-year-long period of repression was launched against dissenters in Iran
with significant blowback for all parties concerned. Most significantly
this created a radical Islamic fundamentalist response that led to the
rise of the Ayatollah Khomeni. In part, yesterday’s tragedy is blowback
from Washington policies executed 50 years back ... Among opponents of
the Soviet backed regime in Afghanistan were Islamic fundamentalists. The
CIA fanned the flames of fundamentalist fervor in order to fuel the ant-Soviet
Afghani movement, the Mujahadeen. Yet, here too there would be blowback.
When the Soviet Union collapsed the highly motivated fundamentalist force
the US helped create and train in covert operations (the stuff of terrorism)
they now turned their sights on their former benefactor. The marriage between
Afghani fundamentalists and the CIA was purely one of convenience. When
no longer “convenient” these highly-trained militants could now turn on
that other source of misery in the Middle East: the US. Again, this was
blowback ... Copious amounts of aid flows liberally to the Israeli government
and spills out into Palestinian communities in the form of state violence
... Palestinians homes are routinely bulldozed and its people live under
military occupation ... Consequently, Palestinian children greet with delight
the news of thousands of innocent people dying in the US on the 11th. This
is blowback."

In a piece by
dissident writer Norman Solomon, TERRORISM,
TELEVISION AND THE RAGE FOR VENGEANCE he describes the subtle nature
of the hypocrisy of Western reactions to the violence. Describing the denial
of the truth of the suffering of the world and the West's part in supporting
tyranny to control the poor, and refusing to put the attack into historical
context (an obvious form of blowback) he sites Orwell's description of
how official channels can use prevarication, conciously and unconciously
to deny unpleasant truths while spreading propaganda throughout a population.

In
his book "1984," George Orwell described the mental dynamics: "The process
has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision,
but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling
of falsity and hence of guilt.... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely
believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and
then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for
just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality
and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies -- all
this is indispensably necessary."

He then proceeds
to list what he thinks are classic examples of the form being played out
over the media in the context of the current disaster.

News
analyst Vincent Cannistraro helped to put it all in perspective for millions
of TV viewers. Cannistraro is a former high-ranking official of the Central
Intelligence Agency who was in charge of the CIA's work with the contras
in Nicaragua during the early 1980s. After moving to the National Security
Council in 1984, he became a supervisor of covert aid to Afghan guerrillas.
In other words, Cannistraro has a long history of assisting terrorists
-- first, contra soldiers who routinely killed Nicaraguan civilians; then,
mujahedeen rebels in Afghanistan ... like Osama bin Laden. How can a longtime
associate of terrorists now be credibly denouncing "terrorism"? It's easy.
All that's required is for media coverage to remain in a kind of history-free
zone that has no use for any facets of reality that are not presently convenient
to acknowledge.

Secretary of
State Colin Powell denounced "people who feel that with the destruction
of buildings, with the murder of people, they can somehow achieve a political
purpose." He was describing the terrorists who had struck his country hours
earlier. But Powell was also aptly describing a long line of top officials
in Washington. It would be very unusual to hear a comment about that sort
of hypocrisy on any major TV network in the United States. Yet surely U.S.
policy-makers have believed that they could "achieve a political purpose"
-- with "the destruction of buildings, with the murder of people" -- when
launching missiles at Baghdad or Belgrade.

Media scrutiny
of atrocities committed by the U.S. government is rare. Only some cruelties
merit the spotlight. Only some victims deserve empathy. Only certain crimes
against humanity are worth our tears. "This will be a monumental struggle
of good versus evil," President Bush proclaimed. The media reactions to
such rhetoric have been overwhelmingly favorable.

Robert Fisk has
been a reporter in the danger zone of the Middle East for some time. In
his response to the tragedy, The
awesome cruelty of a doomed people he wrote also on the subject of
'blowback'.

This
is not the war of democracy vs terror that the world will be asked to believe
in the coming hours and days. It is also about American missiles smashing
into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese
ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village called Qana
a few days later and about a Lebanese militia - paid and uniformed by America's
Israeli ally - hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee
camps.

how easy was
our failure to recognize the new weapon of the Middle East which neither
Americans or any other Westerners could equal: the despair-driven, desperate
suicide bomber. All America's power, wealth - and arrogance, the Arabs
will be saying - could not defend the greatest power the world has ever
known from this destruction. For journalists, even those who have literally
walked through the blood of the Middle East, words dry up here. Awesome,
terrible, unspeakable, unforgivable; in the coming days, these words will
become water in the desert. And there will be, naturally and inevitably,
and quite immorally, an attempt to obscure the historical wrongs and the
blood and the injustices that lie behind yesterday's firestorms. We will
be told about "mindless terrorism'', the "mindless" bit being essential
if we are not to realise how hated America has become in the land of the
birth of three great religions ... Vietnam, is beginning to fade away in
comparison.

In the wake of
the disaster a common theme often heard in on the street interviews is
'why did this happen?' There is either a refusal to put the attack into
context historically (and acknowledge the 'blowback' mentioned above) or
a genuine ignorance of history behind such comments. Edward S. Hermann,
in his response entitled FOLKS
OUT THERE HAVE A "DISTASTE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION AND CULTURAL VALUES"
wrote,

One
of the most durable features of the U.S. culture is the inability or refusal
to recognize U.S. crimes. The media have long been calling for the Japanese
and Germans to admit guilt, apologize, and pay reparations ... corporate
globalization, pushed by the U.S. government and its closest allies, with
the help of the World Trade Organization, World Bank and IMF, had not unleashed
a tremendous immiseration process on the Third World, with budget cuts
and import devastation of artisans and small farmers. Many of these hundreds
of millions of losers are quite aware of the role of the United States
in this process. It is the U.S. public who by and large have been kept
in the dark ... Vast numbers have also suffered from U.S. policies of supporting
rightwing rule and state terrorism, in the interest of combating "nationalistic
regimes maintained in large part by appeals to the masses" and threatening
to respond to "an increasing popular demand for immediate improvement in
the low living standards of the masses," as fearfully expressed in a 1954
National Security Council report ... The idea that many of those torture
victims and their families, and the families of the thousands of "disappeared"
in Latin America in the 1960s through the 1980s, may have harbored some
ill-feelings toward the United States remains unthinkable to U.S. commentators
... All of these victims may well have a distaste for "Western civilization
and cultural values," but that is because they recognize that these include
the ruthless imposition of a neoliberal regime that serves Western transnational
corporate interests, along with a willingness to use unlimited force to
achieve Western ends ... imperial terrorism inevitably produces retail
terrorist responses; that the urgent need is the curbing of the causal
force, which is the rampaging empire."

When empire
is at its height, we can expect empire to celebrate empire, but the eventual
judgment of history follows on the collapse of empire. The day will come
when the history of the twentieth century will be looked at from the outside
in, much as it is today by the rest of the world. The disaffected poor
must be ruled by despots since the West offers nothing to them in the way
of an ideology that can compete with the ideology of revolt and revolution.
A bankrupt ideology is behind the trail of violence and the trail of despots
left behind by western imperial power over the course of the 20th century,
and also is the fuel that feeds the fire of radical violence in the world
today. Worse than this is the dehumanization of self that is required to
live in such a cruel, unjust world (one glance at the medusa's head is
enough to turn people to stone, as is evidenced by the lack of grief or
mourning each and every day over the tens of thousands of lives lost to
instutionalized 'terrorism' - it is hard to think of any other way to describe
the types of policies that have resulted in such inequality and injustice).
Certainly these policies are 'violent' and a source of 'terror' to the
victims who, after all, are the ones we asking to die in their tens of
thousands, preferably quietly, and also unseen, and certainly unmourned.
(But then who wants to attend mourning services day in and day out, 365
days a year? Surely the dying and the dispossessed can do their own mourning.
And as all the preachers are saying this week, surely God will spare us
such suffering and terror ourselves, because, one must suppose, we either
deserve it, or perhaps its just what we want.) Looking at the crimes of
empire, the constant setting up of dictatorships, the grinding poverty,
the hunger that affects so much of the globe, I cannot help but conclude
that the day is coming when the history of this past era will be judged
scornfully just as we scorn the feudalism which preceded it.

Now you can
call this my response, on this day of mourning, Friday September 14th,
2001. You can me the dissidents dissident, because I am not in step with
my peers, but rather I am appalled by todays mourning ceremonies, in particular
I am utterly appalled by the religious aspect the mourning ceremonies.
I am appalled by the displays of hypocrisy I am being confronted with today,
and in particular with the displays of what I experience as blatant religious
hypocrisy, the prayers of famous ministers 'to make America strong' (thinly
cloaked calls to 'Christian soldiers, marching off to war' drawing out
I am sure 'their terrible swift sword', not to mention the exploitation
of the tragedy by what I am sure is a gleeful right wing (and a happy Israeli
government). I noted the blatant (and not cloaked) calls for full scale
warfare against the Arab nations on TBN, the conservative Christian television
station last night, with Hal Lindsay calling this 'a war between two world
views' and calling for full scale jihad against the Arabs 'to avert God's
judgment against America' (and similar sentiments were expressed with equally
uncloaked support for militarism, unlike the vieled language used by Billy
Graham just an hour ago). Like their ancestors before them, ministers prove
to be conservative supporters of the status quo devoted to indoctrinating
the peasants and supporting state power. As Isaiah put it, 'the cause of
the poor goes unheard,' and a truer judgment against this current expression
of contemporary religion in American culture could not be made. Religious
leaders have had plenty of opportunity to mourn the victims of terror and
injustice, after all, I put a starved baby counter onto to my site to count
the deaths of those (dancing celebrating this week) children on my website,
and unfortunately, there was no mourning service for the victims. They
lie in their graves, unmourned and forgotten, like all the victims of torture
and tyranny and injustice of the twentieth century, the century of bankruptcy
in ideology and the consequent use of violent force as a means of control
of the poorest people on earth, who understandably might, like myself,
see the hypocrisy of the mourning and grieving going on now, and who, like
certain little Palestinian children dancing in the streets this week...

And now a few
words posted in protest protest against the religious hypocrisy in our
society...

Isaiah
chapter 58

5 Is such the
mourning that I choose, a day for a person to humble themselves? Is it
to bow down their heads like a rush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes
under them? Will you call this mourning, and a day acceptable to YAHWEH?6 "Is not
this the mourning that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo
the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every
yoke?7 Is it not
to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your
house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from
your own flesh?8 Then shall
your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up
speedily; your righteousness shall go before you, the glory of YAHWEH shall
be your rear guard.9 Then you
shall call, and YAHWEH will answer; you shall cry, and God will say, Here
I am. "If you take away from the midst of you the yoke, the pointing of
the finger, and speaking wickedness,10 if you
pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday.11 And YAHWEH
will guide you continually, and satisfy your desire with good things, and
make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a
spring of water, whose waters fail not.12 And your
ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many
generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer
of streets to dwell in.

Isaiah chapter
59

3 But your
hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; your lips
have spoken lies, your tongue mutters wickedness.4 No one enters
suit justly, no one goes to law honestly; they rely on empty pleas, they
speak lies, they conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity.5 They hatch
adders’ eggs, they weave the spider’s web; he who eats their eggs dies,
and from one which is crushed a viper is hatched.6 Their webs
will not serve as clothing; men will not cover themselves with what they
make. Their works are works of iniquity, and deeds of violence are in their
hands.7 Their feet
run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood; their thoughts
are thoughts of iniquity, desolation and destruction are in their highways.8 The way
of peace they know not, and there is no justice in their paths; they have
made their roads crooked, no one who goes in them knows peace.9 Therefore
justice is far from us, and righteousness does not overtake us; we look
for light, and behold, darkness, and for brightness, but we walk in gloom.10 We grope
for the wall like the blind, we grope like those who have no eyes; we stumble
at noon as in the twilight, among those in full vigor we are like the dead.11 We all
growl like bears, we moan and moan like doves; we look for justice, but
there is none; for salvation, but it is far from us.12 For our
transgressions are multiplied before thee, and our sins testify against
us; for our transgressions are with us, and we know our iniquities:13 transgressing,
and denying YAHWEH, and turning away from following our God, speaking oppression
and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart lying words.14 Justice
is turned back, and righteousness stands afar off; for truth has fallen
in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter.15 Truth is
lacking, and those who departs from evil make themselves a prey. YAHWEH
saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice.16 YAHWEH
saw that there was no person, and wondered that there was no one to intervene;
then God's own arm brought the victory, and God's righteousness upheld
right.17 YAHWEH
put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation; YAHWEH
put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped in fury as a mantle.18 According
to their deeds, so will YAHWEH repay, wrath to God's adversaries, requital
to God's enemies; to the coastlands he will render requital.19 So they
shall fear the name of YAHWEH from the west, and God's glory from the rising
of the sun; for YAHWEH will come like a rushing stream, which the wind
of YAHWEH drives.

Isaiah chapter
63

15 Look down
from heaven and see, from thy holy and glorious habitation. Where are thy
zeal and thy might? The yearning of thy heart and thy compassion are withheld
from us.16 For thou
art our Parent, though Abraham does not know us and Israel does not acknowledge
us; thou, O YAHWEH, art our Parent, our Redeemer from of old is thy name.17 O YAHWEH,
why dost thou make us err from thy ways and harden our heart, so that we
fear thee not? Return for the sake of thy servants, the tribes of thy heritage.18 Thy holy
people possessed thy sanctuary only a little while; our adversaries have
trodden it down.19 We have
become like those over whom thou hast never ruled, like those who are not
called by thy name.1 O that thou
wouldst rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake
at thy presence—2 as when
fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil—to make thy name
known to thy adversaries, and that the nations might tremble at thy presence!3 When thou
didst terrible things which we looked not for, thou camest down, the mountains
quaked at thy presence.4 From of
old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides
thee, who works for those who wait.5 Thou meetest
those that joyfully works righteousness, those that remember thee in thy
ways. Behold, thou wast angry, and we sinned; in our sins we have been
a long time, and shall we be saved?6 We have
all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like
a filthy rag. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind,
take us away.7 There is
no one that calls upon thy name, that bestir themselves to take hold of
thee; for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast delivered us into the
hand of our iniquities.8 Yet, O YAHWEH,
thou art our Parent; we are the clay, and thou art our potter; we are all
the work of thy hand.9 Be not exceedingly
angry, O YAHWEH, and remember not iniquity for ever. Behold, consider,
we are all thy people.10 Thy holy
cities have become a wilderness, Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem
a desolation.11 Our holy
and beautiful house, where our ancestors praised thee, has been burned
by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins.12 Wilt thou
restrain thyself at these things, O YAHWEH? Wilt thou keep silent, and
afflict us sorely?1 I was ready
to be sought by those who did not ask for me; I was ready to be found by
those who did not seek me. I said, "Here am I, here am I," to a nation
that did not call on my name.2 I spread
out my hands all the day to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that
is not good, following their own evil devices;3 a people
who provoke me to my face continually,

Isaiah chapter
1

22 Your silver
has become dross, your wine mixed with water.23 Your princes
are rebels and companions of thieves. Every one loves a bribe and runs
after gifts. They do not defend the fatherless, and the widow’s cause does
not come to them.24 Therefore
YAHWEH says, YAHWEH of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel: "Ah, I will vent
my wrath on my enemies, and avenge myself on my foes.25 I will
turn my hand against you and will smelt away your dross as with lye and
remove all your alloy.26 And I will
restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning.

Isaiah chapter
2

7 Their land
is filled with silver and gold, and there is no end to their treasures;
their land is filled with horses, and there is no end to their chariots.8 Their land
is filled with idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what
their own fingers have made.9 So man is
humbled, and men are brought low—forgive them not!10 Enter into
the rock, and hide in the dust from before the terror of YAHWEH, and from
the glory of God's majesty.11 The haughty
looks of man shall be brought low, and the pride of men shall be humbled;
and YAHWEH alone will be exalted in that day.12 For YAHWEH
of hosts has a day against all that is proud and lofty, against all that
is lifted up and high;13 against
all the cedars of Lebanon, lofty and lifted up; and against all the oaks
of Bashan;14 against
all the high mountains, and against all the lofty hills;15 against
every high tower, and against every fortified wall;16 against
all the ships of Tarshish, and against all the beautiful craft.17 And the
haughtiness of man shall be humbled, and the pride of men shall be brought
low; and YAHWEH alone will be exalted in that day.18 And the
idols shall utterly pass away.19 And men
shall enter the caves of the rocks and the holes of the ground, from before
the terror of YAHWEH, and from the glory of God's majesty, when YAHWEH
rises to terrify the earth.20 In that
day men will cast forth their idols of silver and their idols of gold,
which they made for themselves to worship, to the moles and to the bats,21 to enter
the caverns of the rocks and the clefts of the cliffs, from before the
terror of YAHWEH, and from the glory of God's majesty, when YAHWEH rises
to terrify the earth.22 Turn away
from man in whose nostrils is breath, for of what account is he?

Isaiah chapter
3

14 YAHWEH enters
into judgment with the elders and princes of the people: "It is you who
have devoured the vineyard, the spoil of the poor is in your houses.15 What do
you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor?" says
YAHWEH GOD of hosts.

Isaiah chapter
10

1 Woe to those
who decree iniquitous decrees, and the writers who keep writing oppression,2 to turn
aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their
right, that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless
their prey!3 What will
you do on the day of punishment, in the storm which will come from afar?
To whom will you flee for help, and where will you leave your wealth?4 Nothing
remains but to crouch among the prisoners or fall among the slain. For
all this YAHWEH's anger is not turned away and YAHWEH's hand is stretched
out still.

Isaiah chapter
25

3 Therefore
strong peoples will glorify thee; cities of ruthless nations will fear
thee.4 For thou
hast been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress,
a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat; for the blast of the
ruthless is like a storm against a wall,5 like heat
in a dry place. Thou dost subdue the noise of the aliens; as heat by the
shade of a cloud, so the song of the ruthless is stilled.6 On this
mountain YAHWEH of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things,
a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the
lees well refined.7 And YAHWEH
will destroy on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations.8 YAHWEH will
swallow up death for ever, and YAHWEH GOD will wipe away tears from all
faces, and the reproach of the people he will take away from all the earth;
for YAHWEH has spoken.9 It will
be said on that day, "Lo, this is our God; we have waited, that God might
save us. This is YAHWEH; we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in
salvation."

Isaiah chapter
26

7 The way of
the righteous is level; thou dost make smooth the path of the righteous.8 In the path
of thy judgments, O YAHWEH, we wait for thee; thy memorial name is the
desire of our soul.9 My soul
yearns for thee in the night, my spirit within me earnestly seeks thee.
For when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn
righteousness.10 If favor
is shown to the wicked, he does not learn righteousness; in the land of
uprightness he deals perversely and does not see the majesty of YAHWEH.11 O LORD,
thy hand is lifted up, but they see it not. Let them see thy zeal for thy
people.

Isaiah chapter
29

19 The meek
shall obtain fresh joy in YAHWEH, and the poor among men shall exult in
the Holy One of Israel.20 For the
ruthless shall come to nought and the scoffer cease, and all who watch
to do evil shall be cut off,21 who by
a word make a man out to be an offender, and lay a snare for him who reproves
in the gate, and with an empty plea turn aside him who is in the right.

Isaiah chapter
32

5 The fool
will no more be called noble, nor the knave said to be honorable.6 For the
fool speaks folly, and his mind plots iniquity: to practice ungodliness,
to utter error concerning the LORD, to leave the craving of the hungry
unsatisfied, and to deprive the thirsty of drink.7 The knaveries
of the knave are evil; he devises wicked devices to ruin the poor with
lying words, even when the plea of the needy is right.8 But he who
is noble devises noble things, and by noble things he stands.9 Rise up,
you women who are at ease, hear my voice; you complacent daughters, give
ear to my speech.10 In little
more than a year you will shudder, you complacent women; for the vintage
will fail, the fruit harvest will not come.11 Tremble,
you women who are at ease, shudder, you complacent ones; strip, and make
yourselves bare, and gird sackcloth upon your loins.12 Beat upon
your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine,13 for the
soil of my people growing up in thorns and briers; yea, for all the joyous
houses in the joyful city.14 For the
palace will be forsaken, the populous city deserted; the hill and the watchtower
will become dens for ever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks;15 until the
Spirit is poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful
field, and the fruitful field is deemed a forest.16 Then justice
will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field.17 And the
effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness,
quietness and trust for ever.